No time to hate, because
by susiequeen300
Summary: After the war, Sabrina is forced to face its aftereffects on her, and her dissolving relationship with her family and friends. Years after she leaves town for a chance at a new start, she encounters the one person she hoped she would never see again. Rated T for mild language, depression, and smoking fake candy cigars.
1. Chapter 1

**Her:**

The last straw was drawn around the time that they, in all their disgustingly cheerful optimism, berated her for her so-called "gloomy attitude towards everything".

After everything that had happened, she expected for them to leave some room for sad feelings, but no – there would be no such thing as negative feelings in their family, absolutely not.

She liked to think of her so-called gloomy attitude as realism, rather than a cluster of dark, depressing thoughts that collected in the back of her skull. That was how _they_ liked to think of her disposition. She, Sabrina Grimm, was a harsh, cold-hearted statue. A sharpened-knife. The rain on their freaking wonderful parade. No matter what brave, noble thing she did, they would always shake their heads at her for the way she still sniffed her food for poisoning during dinner. Or how she got up in the middle of the night three times to check and see if the doors were locked. They couldn't understand how, after the terrible war was finished, she was still worrying over everything.

"Everyone is safe and happy, liebling. Why are you so gloomy at the world? You walk around the house with that frown on your face, all the time." Sweet, kind, misguided Granny Relda. To her, anything could be cured with a sunny attitude and purple pasta. Sure, Granny lived through rough times; they all did. But somehow, with her age came an invisible shield that blocked out all depressing spirits, leaving her in her current state: alive, happy, and immune to anything gloomy. Which sucked, since that was all she seemed to be these days: a walking gloomy machine cycling on repeat.

She knew the rest of them felt the same way about her. Her own family, practically estranged from her through a wall that divided them from achieving a truly perfect life. Daphne had always resented her for her overprotectiveness. That was understandable; Daphne was still young and naïve. She could forgive Daphne for hating her and her depressing presence. She'd hate herself too if she saw herself when she was eight years old and still loved fairy tales.

Her parents, on the other hand, were another story. Parents were supposed to realize that their kids weren't going to stay young and blissfully carefree forever. Yet even her no-nonsense father stopped trying to sympathize with her. The war had the complete opposite effect on him than it had on her; rather than becoming more cautious, he began glancing at the world through a kaleidoscope lens, just like the rest of them. The normally stubborn mule of Henry Grimm was reduced to a passive man who agreed to the words his wife uttered. What Veronica Grimm said was law, and that was that.

And her once insightful mother no longer quite understood her. She knew what resilient Veronica Grimm would say to her now if she got the chance. "Honey, it's alright to be moody or sad sometimes, but after a while, you're going to have to toughen up and look on the bright side. Gain some perspective. I mean, think of how lucky we are to be in this position right now. The town is rebuilding, our family is together again, and we've got a brand new house with three times the amount of security locks we had before!"

The problem wasn't that she wasn't ungrateful for her life; she wasn't pessimistic because she was ungrateful. She was just pessimistic because that was who she was, and that was how she coped.

Also, more security locks sounded more like a bigger headache than a blessing. Seriously, it just made life harder, _especially_ if there was a bathroom emergency involved. And living with Daphne and Puck ensured that one would occur at one moment or another.

The last straw however, was not spent because of Granny Relda or Daphne or her parents or anyone else she expected to make her snap. No, the actual last straw was thrown down the gutter when the stupidest, most pig-headed of them all intercepted her on her way back from buying groceries. The town already had rebuilt what its residents considered to be the essentials: a miniscule grocery store, a gas station, and a three-story coffee house complete with every flavor of jellied donut and variety of coffee bean imaginable.

She set her load of groceries on the grass, pulled out an enormous ring of keys (which had unfortunately become twice as heavy than before) and dejectedly began what she knew would be an hour of unlocking an ungodly amount of locks. Halfway through the thirtieth lock, she saw a strand of her hair move from a stray breeze out of the corner of her eye. Immediately she dropped the keys in her grasp, twirled a bag filled with dog food around her wrist like a lasso, and whirled around to meet a soul-sucking giant-eating beast of a terrifying proportion. Instead she faced something similar: a fair-haired teenage boy-fairy in a filthy green hoodie, doubled over in laughter. A monster of some sort, indeed.

She swore and threw her hastily made weapon on the ground. "Seriously Puck?"

The disgusting boy in question was now rolling around on the grass, staining his hoodie a new shade of green. "Can't. Help it," he gasped in between his giggles. "You're. Too. Easy!"

What did you expect, she told herself as she watched him laugh at her. This was a completely normal interaction between yourself and him. Of course he would laugh at you. Your stupid, fast reflexes you no longer need and shouldn't have anymore are laughable. He's a fairy that clung stubbornly to childhood for four thousand years, and counting; he doesn't care about your nightmares any more than the rest of them do. This was expected; this was _normal_. This was forgivable. She was probably being too sensitive anyways, like her family was constantly telling her.

She exhaled through her nose, then bent down to pick up the fallen key ring and resume attempt at opening the door before sundown. "Hey!" She only had two more locks to go. Two more locks, and she wouldn't to listen to this thickheaded boy a moment longer.

"Awww, come on Grimm – don't tell me you're mad at me for laughing. It was hilarious!"

"Hilarious to you, of course. Hysterical."

"Exactly! Glad we're on the same page for that," he replied with a grin that, if she didn't know better, looked relieved. "So, how have you been occupying your free time now that we don't have to fight crazy people or slay dragons anymore?" There he went again, saying words that only reminded her of everything bad and hurtful. The war that left her still smarting from the aftershock, even after everyone had moved on. Everyone but her.

She replied with only half the truth. "Just picking up some food for Granny. Running errands and stuff, you know, the usual." The other half of the truth: she had spent her day seeing ghosts. She had passed by a rosebush on the way to the grocery store and could have sworn she saw Briar Rose stooping down to pick up a bloom.

"Wow, that sounds really adventurous," he commented sarcastically with an exaggerated fake yawn. "Seems like something you'd do, though, since you're all weak and mopey these days."

Now he wasn't so forgivable anymore. It didn't matter though; she had opened both locks successfully and was already knocking on the door and announcing to the house she was home, as the final magical enchantment cast on the house required her to fulfill in order to enter. She had one foot inside the house when he said, "I swear, Grimm; you're gonna end up living in this sad town forever, you're so pathetic."

She froze in the doorway, her hands still clenching the groceries, and stopped breathing.

Pathetic. Puck, the Trickster King, the epitome of all things lighthearted and idiotic, had called her pathetic.

It shouldn't have bothered her; really, _he_ was the one that was pathetic. Four thousand years old and still running rampant like he was four? (Never mind his awkward puberty phase and the alternate future time travel where they were supposedly married; he was still an utter child.)

It still burned, though. The boy she had kissed in front of chimpanzees and hugged for warmth in the dark and had fought in a war with, thought she was pathetic. Not strong enough to handle trauma alone. So weak that she couldn't have a prank played on her without having a panic attack. She never thought he would go that far. She never thought he could be that cruel.

She whipped her head around to face him. "I. Am. Not. Pathetic."

His shocked face was visible before she turned around completely and slammed the door in his face. She congratulated herself for lasting long enough to put the groceries away and walk to her room before she let tears slip by on her face. She had tried so hard to cope, to be tough and brave all at once. Apparently she was too weak for them all now.

She shook with fury and long held sobs for a moment longer, then went to her closet. It took a while to find it under her pile of unfolded clothes, but finally she managed to pull out her suitcase and place it on top of her bed.

If Puck had the nerve to tell her she was pathetic and going to be stuck in this town forever, then she would prove him wrong. He was the last straw.

She'd show him. She'd show them all.

 **A/N: My new multi-chaptered story! The title is based off a poem by Emily Dickinson. Let me know what you think:)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Him:**

He'd been skimming the treetops when he spotted her walking her bike towards the house; her hair was flowing down her back and her elbows were angled awkwardly due to all of the grocery bags dangling in her arms. He couldn't help but faintly smile at the way she huffed at the infinite amount of locks she had to open. Even from a distance he could make out the rigid set of her shoulders and the downward slope of her lips.

Yes, he'd been thinking about her way too much. If he were still ageless and blessedly immature, he'd be dreaming about the pots of goop he could dump on her head, rather than her insanely long golden hair. To him, her hair seemed longer than Rapunzel's, and he'd met Rapunzel before. He initially thought that she'd been wearing a blanket on her head until he realized that the blanket _was_ her hair.

Besides the point; if only he could rip another hole in time and warn Past Puck to not kidnap the two girls who would wander into his territory and try to dunk the blonde girl in the pool. Then again, if he hadn't done that, he would have never gotten to learn how satisfying it was to rile her up with pranks. She always wore an I'm-going-to-bury-you-in-the-backyard-I'm-that-angry-at-you kind of look that only she could pull off so well. Or how musical her laugh sounded. Or how her smile could melt the snow off the evergreens…

Normally he would attempt to save his last strands of dignity and come back to the living in disgust of cooties and all things mushy. He knew now that it was too late to do that. He could allow himself to indulge in liking her from a distance though, like he was doing now. Did evil tricksters think gooey thoughts about people? There was no way to know. It was bogus anyway, considering he'd ruined his chances of being a villain of the worst kind when he had saved people's sorry asses multiple times.

Staring at her again, he could pinpoint whom she looked like now. She was the exact portrait of an ice queen, with her angled body and harsh features. He'd seen plenty of ice queens in his life, but none appeared as beautiful or as broken as she did.

Sabrina Grimm, the fiercely brave and daring Queen of Sneaks, was not her usual self. Sometime between the Everafter war and the reconstruction of Ferryport Landing, her hot temper had cooled down until she was nearly unrecognizable. These days she looked brittle. Not enough food. An empty shell. She had the kind of

hollow look that most people envied and admired. Thinness was attractive these days.

He hated it more than anything.

The only time she reemerged from her ghost-like state was when she was annoyed at something or someone. Luckily, he was the perfect someone to annoy her. Before, he had pushed her buttons just for the pure villainous fun of it. Now, he did whatever he could to make her angry if only to glimpse a spark of her former self. Alive, and brimming with life.

She was almost halfway through the locks on the door. Seeing his chance, he dove down on the lawn and landed silently behind her. Briefly he considered simply reaching out and touching a strand of her hair, which was shimmering in the late sunrays. He scoffed at himself for even considering that over a scare. He really had fallen far.

When she was about a breath away, he prepared to launch himself forward. Before he could however, she had already sensed his presence and whirled around, clutching a bag of what appeared to be Elvis's next meal. Her face was just like he'd expected it to be. He couldn't help but smile at the cute way her nostrils were flaring and the fire in her eyes. When she let out a string of foul words from her mouth, he giggled. "Can't. Help it," he managed to get out. "You're. Too. Easy!" It was as if Ice Queen had boiled under a fire, and he could see her usual self again.

But just like that, her eyes went out. Her body had hollowed out again into a paper reed. It was as though all the fire in her had left in one breath. He couldn't let her go again. Not when she'd almost come back to life for a moment.

"Hey!" he shouted behind her. She was already back to unlocking the door, as if he didn't exist. As if _she_ didn't exist, and was simply going through robotic motions. He tried again. "Awww, come on Grimm – don't tell me you're mad at me for laughing. It was hilarious!"

"Hilarious to you, of course. Hysterical."

It was a response. That was all he needed. Anything to keep her alive and talking, if only for a few more moments. "So, how have you been occupying your free time now that we don't have to fight crazy people or slay dragons anymore?"

"Just picking up some food for Granny. Running errands and stuff, you know, the usual."

He gave the most overly fake yawn he could possibly make. "Wow, that sounds really adventurous. Seems like something you'd do, though, since you're all weak and mopey these days."

He winced slightly at his words. He didn't speak so eloquently when he was desperate to hold her attention. He felt like he was a boy tugging at her pigtails, trying too hard to make her notice him in the worst possible way. Even with his blunt words though, she was still ignoring him. She had already picked up the grocery bags on the ground and was disappearing into the house. Just like that, she was fading away from him.

Anything to keep her alive and talking. Anything to hold her attention for more than just a breath and a few fumble of words.

He blurted it out when she was nearly gone from him."I swear, Grimm; you're gonna end up living in this sad town forever, you're so pathetic."

His own words didn't quite hit him until her frame went entirely rigid and her hands fisted around the bags in what looked like an attempt at cutting circulation from her fingertips. Her body whirled around to face him, and her hair whipped his face in the process, leaving a sting that hurt almost as much as her expression did. She looked completely shattered, like someone had taken her and smashed her into a thousand tiny ice fragments. _He had done this to her._

He wanted to fall back into a coma, like the time he ate that poisonous apple from Snow White's fairy tale. Like when she kissed him back to life. Maybe he was the dead one now.

"I. Am. Not. Pathetic," she said to him through clenched teeth. She didn't look like a spark. She looked like an inferno that had burned an entire forest in its wake. He reached his hand out to her, to stop her from leaving him, to give himself a chance to fix this terrible mess of broken pieces he had made. But she slammed the door before he could touch her.

And in the process, she also slammed the door on his finger.

He quickly retracted his hand from the doorframe to cradle his hand to his chest and bite his lip to keep from shouting at the pain throbbing. He decided to consider it the payback for his words, his words that were too awful to analyze at that moment. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ decision. He'd only wanted to shake her enough to wake her up, not send her up in flames.

He wanted to run after her and tell her that, but knowing him, it would probably come out all wrong again.

Instead, he slowly opened the door with his uninjured hand and walked upstairs to his room, where he retracted his wings and walked over to the trampoline. He sprawled out on the net and said a silent prayer that tomorrow would erase today's words from existence. Tomorrow was a new day. He could make amends then and apologize to her for his stupid, stupid fumble of words.

When he woke up and walked down the stairs the next day, he saw everyone sitting around the dining table, talking with anxious voices. His first thought was that someone had given Elvis sausage on accident again and they were merely planning the most effective escape route from the house. Of course that was too good to be true, though. Daphne glanced up at him as he approached the table and immediately began talking to him. "Thank goodness you're awake now, Puck! We can't find her anywhere. She just disappeared the night before and we don't know where she went!"

He didn't have to ask who was missing. His chest started to constrict. "Relax Marshmallow, I'm sure she just went on a jog this morning and got lost or something," he tried to reassure her, and himself inwardly.

"No, she's missing completely," Red said to him from beside Daphne. "We went everywhere we possibly could in this town to find her."

No. No no no no no. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't have slept in this late and missed her in the morning. He didn't even get the chance to apologize for his stupid words and his stupid thoughts and his overall stupidness.

He knew the answer, but he asked anyway. "What do you mean?"

Henry Grimm looked at him with worry etched into his face. "There's no way to know exactly where she is now. She left town, Puck."

There was no more breathing. She was gone. And he had let her leave completely shattered.

 **A/N: Dun dun dunnnn. Clumsily written and edited at 2 in the morning. Sorry for the plethora of grammar/typo mistakes that must reside in here. I know Puck is kind of AU and super mushy in this, but I really like romantic Puck :) Hope everyone has a great week!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Her:**

It was official. Gas stations had the worst food ever.

At least, Ferryport Landing's single gas station had the worst food ever.

Sabrina sat glumly on the curb outside, holding a five dollar sandwich with wilting lettuce and too much turkey. She hated it when there was too much turkey in her sandwiches. Despite her love for hot dogs and other New York vendor classics, even she drew a line when it came to the stuff in her sandwiches. Too much meat and the entire sandwich becomes a barely chewable chunk of salt, meat lovers be damned. Still; it was three am, she'd been aimlessly wandering away from town, and she hadn't had dinner. Desperate times called for desperate measures, even if that meant consuming soggy sandwiches with questionable expiration dates.

After grimacing her way through and picking out several layers of turkey, she crumpled the box and wiped her oily fingers on her jeans. She then assessed her situation and surroundings - just another habit that she couldn't seem to shake off after years of facing monsters that were supposed to stay hidden under her bed. Beside her stood her beloved and worn in suitcase, packed tightly with what she knew were essentials: clothes, underwear and extra socks, toiletries, plenty of money "borrowed" from Uncle Jake's wallet (he'd miss it, but surely he realized that she would spend his cash far better than he would), a Swiss Army knife, and a couple of other useful trinkets. She knew she shouldn't have, but she had brought along the little wooden sword that Puck gave so long ago.

The neon sign hanging precariously next to the gas station window was flickering slowly, its message of "open" turning off and the word "closed" replacing it. Looking at the single dimmed streetlight before her, she considered turning back home on her bicycle. It was probably the right thing to do, she was sure. It was definitely the smart thing to do. The family would realize her absence in the morning, probably during breakfast. They most likely hadn't noticed yet, if she was remembering the house schedule correctly. Friday evenings, everyone except her gathered around the TV and watched reruns of westerns. She used to watch with them too, until Puck's incessant popcorn crunching sounds and Daphne's running commentary drove her back to the peace and quiet of her room. For a brief amount of time, Daphne would attempt to fetch her from her safe haven, but she gave up after a while. Proof that her family was getting tired of her moping.

She wondered if they would want her back home anyhow.

No, of course they would. At the very least, they would consider her running away an inconvenience to their lives, what with all the trouble they'd have to go to find her and start the engine on the horrendous beast they called a car. All the facts so far pointed to returning home as the best option.

The best option, though, wasn't her favorite.

Returning home would mean returning to invisibility and restlessness and acute despair. Returning home would mean returning to washing dishes and sitting alone in her room and forcing down oddly colored food. Returning home would mean listening with no patience as Mr. Canis tries to persuade her to take up yoga for her anger issues, or her mother nag her about her negative attitude.

Returning home would mean facing Puck, and his all too seemingly accurate description of her. After all, according to him, she was pathetic.

She crumbled her sandwich wrapper in her fist after using it as a scratchy napkin to wipe her greasy fingers, and then chucked it towards the trash bin a few feet in front of her. The wrapper bounced off the rim and fell on the ground instead, as if to accentuate her pathetic-ness. After staring at it for several seconds, she sighed heavily and got up to throw the wrapper in the bin. Yes, looking at all of her options, it seemed that going home was the best thing to do.

She was mounting her bike next to the curb and preparing to pedal in the direction of home when her ears picked up a faint beat thumping through the air. She twisted her torso around to see a bright red, filthy convertible make its way towards her. As the convertible approached closer, the faint thumping transformed into an obnoxious bass vibrating the gas pump stations and the very concrete beneath her feet. The beat was accompanied by a distorted techno sound similar to the music played at nightclubs and a high-pitched whiny voice. She glanced over and saw what appeared to be two tipsy individuals in the front seat, giggling deliriously.

The man in the driver's seat loosely gripped the steering wheel with one hand while holding a cigarette in the other hand dangling out the side door. He looked like he had walked straight out of a musical remake of Grease if Danny Zuko had adopted a rounder face and wore a peacoat in favor of a leather jacket. His hair was horrendously slicked back in tousled brown waves and a pair of sunglasses folded in his front pocket, despite the late hour and total lack of blinding sunlight. His companion had bold makeup painted on her face and was shaking her long, blonde highlighted hair to the beat continually booming out of the car's speakers.

As the convertible made a jerky stop in front of her, she reluctantly glided the bike brake onto the ground again. Even with closer inspection, it was difficult to decipher the couple's age. Judging by their lack of wrinkle lines and their choice of music, she'd say they were younger than thirty but not much younger than eighteen or so; at least one or two years older than her, for not old enough for legal drinking age. The driver made to lean out the side of the car, and she subtly leaned herself away in the opposite direction.

"You lost, honey?" he asked with a toothy grin, revealing surprisingly white teeth. At least none of them were rotten. His words didn't slur, but she was still hesitant. No matter their age, she wasn't quite sure whether or not they were just tipsy or potentially dangerous people. Thieves, or drug dealers maybe. Thieves she could deal with, having done plenty of stealing in her lifetime. She respected robbers, really – they were clever and shrewd and sneaky, just like her. Drug dealers were kind of pushing it, mainly since they were sketchier and more health damaging. And anyways, she couldn't see the appeal in smoking or drugs in general. Who needed cocaine or marijuana when there was Granny's durian and porcupine casserole? As far as she was concerned, that stuff gave her the same high as drugs probably could.

She really hoped they were only thieves or drug dealers. Those she could handle with a fair amount of confidence. A couple of quick swipes with her wooden sword and some borrowed moves from Snow White's Bad Apples class, and they'd be out cold. After all, what were two potentially non-sober people compared to an army of power-hungry monsters straight from the stuff of nightmares?

 _Oh God_ , she thought with familiar panic flooding her lungs. _What if they were Everafters out for revenge on her?_ The last thing she needed on her runaway from home was a kidnapping. That would be extremely dangerous and possibly deadly, not to mention terribly inconvenient for her family if they managed to discover her disappearance. She could already hear what her dad would say: " _How could you do this, Sabrina? Do you realize how hard it was to save you from those kidnappers, let alone find you? We had to skip our movie night to figure out where you went!"_

Okay, maybe she wasn't giving her dad enough credit. He wouldn't be that disappointed that movie night was wasted. He'd definitely be more concerned and mature than that.

She could, however, think of one person who would react somewhat similarly. A devilish smile and mischievous green eyes floated in her eyesight. Yes, Puck would be that immature. Puck would sigh dramatically in irritation from all the inconvenience she caused them.

She wished that his words didn't affect her so much. She wished fate had given her a nicer and slightly more sanitary crush. Was that too much to ask for? Future predictions in a dystopian world where the good guys hadn't won came to her mind when she thought about them; stupid time tear, and stupid, stupid alternate-world self. Apparently her alternate adult self didn't get any wiser in the future…

"Helloooo? You stoned or something?"

Time seemed to spin back in place, and the present situation caught up with her. Hazardous fuzzy-minded people about to harm her; right. Focus.

She straightened herself the best she could on her bike and dished out her most intimidating glare – the one she gave Puck, Daphne, Red, or Elvis when she caught one or several of them eating all of the Oreos in the cupboard. "I could say the same thing about you guys," she retorted with a pointed glance at the cigarette dangling from his fingers.

He followed her line of vision and laughed. "This?" he said while waving the cigarette in his hand. "This is harmless stuff. A five year old could eat this."

She rolled her eyes and huffed. Clearly this guy was either way more high than she had estimated him to be, or he had no clue how much lung cancer he was inhaling "Are you serious?" she scoffed. "Have you never seen any of the Real Cost commercials?"

The girl lounging in the shotgun seat perked up and gasped. "Oh, those things are _so_ scary. They like, totally give me nightmares. Whenever they show up during commercial breaks, I just turn off the computer."

The boy next to her nodded his head. "True that, true that." He turned his attention back to Sabrina with an expectant look on his face. "You need a ride? Our backseat is open." He patted to the plush seat behind him. A well worn blanket, along with what looked like several filled cardboard boxes sat in the back.

"Are you crazy? Why on earth would I hitch a ride from chubby, smoker Danny Zuko and his ditzy girlfriend?"

"Hey! I am NOT chubby! How dare you try and label my body type," he protested with indignation.

"Oh my gosh, you are _so right_ – he _does_ look like chubby Danny Zuko! Why didn't I ever think of that before?" the giggly girl said, then hesitated. "Wait, did you just call me ditzy?" She tapped him on the shoulder in the middle of his rant. "Hey, what does _ditzy_ mean?"

 _It means you're scatterbrained_ , Sabrina thought to herself. It seemed that even after all these years, and Daphne's recent acquisition of a pocket-sized Merriam Webster, she was still playing dictionary for people.

The boy ignored her in favor of continuing his speech towards Sabrina. "Also, I don't smoke."

Sabrina made another pointed glare towards the cigarette in his hand.

"I told you already, a five year old could eat this stuff. It's a candy cigarette. See?" He made a point of placing the cigarette between his lips and sucking in deeply. The cloud he blew out from his mouth appeared to be made of some powdery pink substance. "It's pure sugar. This one's strawberry flavored."

"He's totally got a sugar addiction," the girl in the car said to Sabrina. "It's why he's so chubby."

"I'll have you know I was voted the most likely to walk off the face of a magazine by my class," he huffed.

"It was Golf Magazine.

"Exactly! I was _skinny_ , like the golf club."

"They compared you to the golf ball, actually – "

"Enough!" The boy abruptly cut his companion off, then said: "Well, you going somewhere?"

Sabrina opened her mouth to tell him yes, but then closed it when realizing that would be false. She had no idea where she wanted to go. A minute ago she was ready to pedal back home and face her family again, but now she wasn't so sure. The one thing pulling her towards and keeping her away from home was Puck. Maybe it was melodramatic of her, but she didn't feel like facing the boy she liked after he'd dismissed her heart like it was yesterday's tuna salad.

No, she was certain now. She wasn't coming home yet; it had only been a couple of hours, and Puck's words hadn't quite faded from her head. She still needed time to think things through away from her family and the house.

She took a breath and admitted the truth. "No, not exactly. Anywhere away from here."

"Ugh, I second that. This dump of a town is disgusting and a total drab," the girl said to Sabrina.

"Our offer still stands, if you want it then. We're on our way to New York city ourselves." He took a final drag from the fake cigarette and let it fall towards the concrete.

She couldn't believe it. New York city sounded really good at the moment. Somewhere familiar, but not so familiar that she'd get tired of it. Somewhere easy to sit on a bench and watch pedestrians eat hot dogs and just think.

If there was one thing the war had taught her, it was that she was too young to fall in love, and too old to take a chance at it. She had no time to love, because…she was too busy trying to find herself. She definitely didn't have time to wait around for an immature boy-fairy to apologize for his words, if he was even sorry for them at all. Love, she could certainly live without.

Love, she could leave in the backyard at home.

"Umm, sure. Why not?" The boy gave a noise of approval and began opening the car door to let her inside. "Hold on a second, though."

He froze in his movements. "What?"

"I – I have to make sure. Just in case. Are either of you guys…Everafters?" She forced the word off her tongue like it was molten wax.

They looked at her blankly. "A what now?" he said.

"Isn't that some kind of online fitness program?" the girl asked.

Sabrina exhaled in relief. "Never mind, just…ignore me. New York city sounds good."

The couple looked at each other and shrugged. The peacoat-clad boy resumed opening his door to help her and her bike inside the vehicle. It was a tight fit, but they managed it in the end by having her squeeze in between the boxes and sitting uncomfortably on one of the bike handles. After settling in the front seat once more, he twisted his torso to look back at her. "I don't think we got each other's names."

"Sabrina." She held out a hand to shake as best as she could without knocking anything over.

"I'm Courtney, by the way," the girl in front said without turning around.

The boy grinned at Sabrina with another brilliantly shiny smile.

"Bradley."

 **A/N: School + extracurricular activities + stress = no time to write on fanfiction. The end of February nears, and with it comes more time to indulge in the wonderful things, like writing. To all the people who left a review, I leave my eternally grateful smile and a steaming cup of coffee:)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Him:**

Only a few hours had passed, and already the entire family was going through a meltdown. They hadn't left the table, although none of them were really touching their breakfast now. Puck really wanted to grab a sausage, but he was still standing, and Daphne and Red were blocking the path towards the table. He'd have to lean awkwardly over them and make a stab at the plate with his fork, which had the possibility of dropping on the floor and being quickly snatched into the jaws of Elvis. As much as he loved a good fart joke, Elvis's farts were a little too intense, even for himself. He didn't want to smell _that_ bad.

He took showers now. Not because he wanted to smell good for Sabrina or anything. The old lady had threatened to withhold his breakfast if he didn't. So, soap and running water it was.

The family's arguing voices rose and fell like ocean tides, each person pushing to be heard over one another, sometimes punctuating an intense point by banging a fist on the hardwood table. Puck decided to risk reaching over Daphne for the food. His stomach had been growling at him with the same intense persistence his pet chimpanzees did when they were angry at him for not feeding them. Extending his arm as far as it could go, he painfully stretched his fingers towards the plate of food until they were practically popping out of their sockets.

His efforts failed, however, when Henry banged his fist on the table for what seemed to be the third time that morning. The vibrations tipped someone's cup of coffee over and jostled the table legs, forcing Puck to mournfully retract his hand sans the plate of food.

"Sabrina has been acting antsy all week, maybe even longer. Obviously she's gotten in her head that she had to go on some kind of…" He huffed angrily. "Some kind of run away adventure!" He then directed his glare at Veronica. She threw her hands up as if to deflect his accusation.

"Oh, so now you're looking at me, like I'm the reason she decided to take off? What do I have to do with this?"

"She gets her wild and craziness from you!"

"Ohhhhh _no_ , you do NOT get to call me crazy, Henry Grimm!"

Their arguments reminded him of something he'd heard a while back; somewhere around the time he'd attended school as a personal bodyguard for Sabrina. Somewhere between the haze of fighting crazy frog tongues and being tied up in cobwebs (quite literally), he had remembered a grouchy and dreary-eyed teacher explaining a system in which all people experiencing pain or loss went through. The five stages of grief, it was called. It seemed that family members were taking on each stage for themselves, in no particular order.

Judging from the steam practically shooting from their ears, Puck would guess that Sabrina's parents were set on the stage of anger.

Daphne and Red were clearly attempting to bargain. "I can try and leave another voicemail for Sabrina. Maybe if we figure out what she wants, we can offer her something to get her to come back," Daphne suggested, with an agreeing nod from Red as well.

"I highly doubt that Sabrina is searching for something we have," Mr. Canis mused aloud, in response to Daphne's proposal.

"Now, now, we just need to _calm down._ She probably went on a walk that led to some detours, or decided to grab some regular food for breakfast, like she normally does. She mentioned to me that she was planning on picking up some of those new donuts that the coffee shop started making," Granny Relda weakly offered. Puck tilted his head to the side and considered. Definitely on denial.

Uncle Jake snorted. "She must've taken a heck of a lot of detours. Like, detours that happened to have her disappear off the face of the town."

With that, the whole room went silent.

"You don't think she…" Red trailed off, and, sensing her comment was probably not wanted at the moment, she picked up her fork and resumed pushing her sausage around on her plate.

 **"** Oh no," Veronica gasped.

Henry groaned and tried to lean his forehead on the table, but unfortunately he landed in the spilled coffee, causing him to sharply rise and sputter angrily. Without even glancing at him, Veronica wordlessly handed him a napkin. In sharp movements, he swiped at the brown liquid seeping into his pants, as if the droplets would defy science and roll off the fabric instead.

"She can't have gone to the city! That's like, a bajillion miles away from here!" Daphne protested.

"She appeared to have taken her bike however," Mr. Canis said with serious consideration in his voice.

"Mr. Canis is right. And we all know a stubborn Sabrina is a determined Sabrina," added Granny Relda with a sigh. They all sat in strained silence, contemplating the sheet stubbornness of Sabrina Grimm, a trait that had served her well throughout her years in running from orphanages and fighting but hindered them from easily finding her.

"Puck, you've been awfully quiet for a while," Veronica said hesitantly, after the moment had passed. "Tell us what you think."

Puck froze. This was the moment he'd been trying to avoid. He'd been trying a tactic that wild animals did all the time in the wild when they didn't want to be eaten: stay still and don't make a sound. He'd never considered himself a victim of a predator, but in this situation he definitely felt cornered. Especially because he knew her absence was probably his fault.

Unfortunately, his silence had done the opposite of what he wanted. Clearly everyone was expecting him to make an obnoxious joke or a trivial comment of some sort. He didn't feel like disappointing, but he didn't want to give up the information he had on the subject anyway. Voicing aloud what happened between him and Sabrina yesterday would make everything real.

It would make everything his fault.

"Well, we all knew that Grimm had a gloomy cloud she was carrying above her head. Old Lady is probably right, and she went to stuff herself fat with donuts to make herself feel better. I know I feel better after I've eaten. Like right now; see?" He emphasized his point by snatching a half-eaten sausage off of Daphne's plate (finally!) and swallowing it whole while ignoring Daphne's cry of indignation. Other than Henry's annoyed huff, everyone at the table seemed a little relieved to hear Puck's remark. It was just insensitive and brainless enough to meet their expectations of the Trickster King and throw them off his scent.

"I don't think we should rule out New York City. We all know that's her favorite hometown, and if there's any place she'd be wanting to go that's close enough to bike to, it's there," Uncle Jake said, and the entire family made noises of agreement. Everyone except Puck, who was still warring with himself at the table.

Slowly, without making too much sound, Puck stepped backward in small steps, until he reached the edge of the kitchen. Then, when he was sure no one was looking at him still, he turned and headed up the stairs to his room.

He quickly shut himself behind his door and sank to the ground. He knew Sabrina hadn't left for donuts, at least not for that long without a note or a warning. There was no other explanation as to why she had left. Sabrina Grimm was pissed, all because of his mouth that had gone too far.

He wandered into his room until he found the trampoline he used as a bed, and banged his forehead against the edge of his repeatedly while on his knees.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 **A/N: Guess who promised to update soon and didn't because she was stuck on this chapter for two months? * ducks head under * Thanks to everyone who continued to review and stick with this story. I'm not gonna lie: my writing muse had utterly abandoned me.**


End file.
